A dividend from the Australian Tax Office

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I received a dividend the other day. Low and behold its from the Australian Tax Office. I really must thank Google (Gmail) because it was correctly labelled as 'spam'. Rest assured I'm not taking any money from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), but neither am I giving them any. Well that's not entirely true. I pay indirect taxes like everyone else, which I suspect actually closely represents my 'burden' on the community. Rest assured if their is any discrepancy I will repay all Australians in spades by holding this, and other governments, accountable for the slavery they are perpetrating upon the Australian community.

Each of us has a right to their own life. I am not against taxation (if you want to call it that), but I am only willing to pay for services which I have agreed to pay, or where determined by a court based on objective reasoning, those public services where a court has ruled the people are obliged to pay based on some 'objective' payment formula. For instance, I would think a petrol tax is a legitimate impost if all the proceeds were spent on road improvement, construction, pathways. At the moment such money goes to unidentified services. Farmers might complain that they use a lot of petrol on-farm, so are penalised, though others might argue that access roads to farms are subsidised for lack of use. Of course all parties should be aware of the money saved by paying a low-cost tax as opposed to the inconvenience of toll booths along stretches of highway, or the hassles of collections from computerised metering along highway stretches, or metres on car kilometres. The amount of petrol consumed is also proportional to the weight class of the vehicle. A weighting factor could also be given to different vehicles on the basis of their fuel efficiency. It would be the responsibility of a court to determine an objective outcome.

Damm! After writing that long email. I realised it really is spam. :) I thought it was just a mistake by Google. But in fact the www.ato.gov.au link goes to another address.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com